Q&A

Shereen El Feki discusses her new book on sex in the Arab world

March 09, 2013|By Jasmine Elist | This post has been corrected, as indicated below.

Shereen El Feki is the author of "Sex and the Citadel." (Ulrike Leyens )

As change sweeps across the Arab world, there are a variety of lenses through which to examine these changes: religious, cultural, political, economic. Shereen El Feki has chosen a decidedly less conventional lens with her new new book “Sex and the Citadel: Intimate Life in a Changing Arab World” (Pantheon, $29), due out Tuesday.

The book takes a close look at the sexual lives of men and women in the Middle East. Combining original research with first-person stories from housewives, young virgins, activists and sex therapists, “Sex and the Citadel” provides a detailed account of a veiled and sensitive aspect of Arab society.

Currently dividing her time between London and Cairo, El Feki has worked as a journalist for the Economist and a presenter with Al Jazeera English. She also is a former vice chairwoman of the United Nations’ Global Commission on HIV and Law.

El Feki took a break from a full day of live interviews and popped into a London cafe to catch up with us over email (as well as take shelter from the brutal rain). She will be making her way to Los Angeles for a Writers Bloc event this Sunday at 1 p.m. at the Silent Movie Theatre, where she will be in conversation with Egyptian American comedian Omar Elba.

While "Sex and the Citadel" takes a look at the sexual lives of men and women across the Middle East, there is a stronger focus specifically on Egypt.

My book is centered on Egypt, and in particular Cairo, in part for personal reasons. My father is Egyptian, most of my family live in Egypt, I carry an Egyptian passport and I’m Muslim. But I grew up in Canada, and I never thought much about my Arab heritage -- until Sept. 11, that is. The events of that day and their aftermath spurred me to look more closely at my Arab origins, to better understand where I came from.

But this is more than personal. Egypt is a natural focus of this book because it is the most popu­lous country in the Arab region. Because of its strategic geopolitical importance, it retains formidable political, economic, social and cultural influence across the region. The collective sexual problems faced by Egyptians­­ -- taboos against premarital sex, masturbation, homosexuality, unwed moth­erhood, abortion, and a culture of censorship and silence, preached by religion and enforced by social convention -- are found across the Arab region. And the solutions that Egyptians will, I hope, find in the years to come will have relevance for their neighbors across the Arab region as well.

Why did you choose sex as the lens through which to examine political and social change throughout the region?

My background is in HIV/AIDS. I trained as an immunologist before becoming healthcare correspondent at the Economist (where part of my beat was covering the global HIV/AIDS epidemic), and most recently I was vice chair of the UN’s Global Commission on HIV and the Law. If you want to understand HIV in the Arab region, you have to look at sex because it is the main route of transmission in most countries in the region, and taboos around sex pose a serious challenge to tackling HIV.

It became clear to me that sexuality, more broadly defined, is an incredibly powerful lens with which to study a society, because it gives you a view not only of the miniature of people’s intimate lives but also the wider canvas of public life. Beliefs and values, attitudes and behaviors around sex are shaped by bigger forces -- politics, economics, religion, tradition, gender, generations. If you really want to know a people, start by looking inside their bedrooms.

You delve into a subject matter that is both intimate and largely hidden from view. How did you go about conducting research?

My approach came from my background as both a scientist and a journalist. The academic in me set out to identify, collect and analyze as much of the existing research on sexuality in the Arab region as I could find. It wasn’t easy; research on sexual life in most of the Arab world is still scarce (there is, as yet, no Kinsey or Hite Report for the region -- badly needed, I might add), and more often than not, the results have ended up in a locked drawer due to state or self-censorship.

But after five years traveling across the region, I managed to find a treasure trove of studies and surveys, which readers can explore in my book and on my website, sexandthecitadel.com. But I’m also a journalist, so I was interested in personal stories as well. Throughout the book, the individual tales are a bright light on the research findings, illuminating points in a human and highly engaging way.

You include first-person accounts from virgins to housewives to sex therapists. How did you find these women?